Need help reconfiguring my Win8 Storage Space

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rygy

Limp Gawd
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Jun 19, 2003
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I decided to move from Windows Home Server v1 to Windows 8. WHS Drive Extender worked really well and it seemed like Storage Spaces in Win8 was quite good as well.

I set up my server a couple months ago without putting a lot of research into how best to set up the storage space. I was also migrating data without adding new empty drives so I didn't have 3 to use to set up a parity storage space as I should have. I also didn't want to lose half of my capacity by going mirrored. Instead, I went with a simple, non-resilient storage space and proceeded to move data and add drives until everything was set.

I've got three 2TB and one 1TB in a single drive pool and a SSD for the OS and programs using the five internal SATA connectors on my motherboard. Now, I'm noticing slow-downs accessing the files in the storage space so I did some diagnostics and two of the 2TB drives are failing with many bad sectors being flagged.

Because I was unable to set up a parity storage space I'm not sure if I'm able to add additional drives to the simple pool thus increasing the empty space to be able to remove the failing drives. I thought that if I had more than 2TB of free space I'd have the option of removing one of the 2TB drives as Windows would automatically move the files from the drive selected to be removed into the free space; this doesn't seem to be the case though.

I've installed a PCI SATA card to give me a couple extra internal connectors and have a eSATA dock as well but if adding free space doesn't allow me to select a drive for removal my only other option is to create a separate pool using new drives and manually move the files. Is this my only option?

My storage space is used to hold all of my music, photos and videos to stream using Plex. My plan now is to create both parity and 2-way mirrored spaces on a new drive pool for the different types of files. My photos and personal documents will go on the mirrored space and music and videos will go on the parity space. Does this seem like the best method?
 
OK, my area to play... LOL

Now, I personally cringe at the idea of mixing different (size and type) drives into same pools. I always them matched as best as possible.

I am assuming you have all your data sitting on other drives and can afford to test/play around with the pool.

First area is to confirm if the drives are good or bad. Do this pronto before rooting around.

Once done, come back and let me know and I will put up the tweaks for getting parity working best and fast.
 
The drives were acquired as space was needed and thus were not all purchased at the same time. I also am frugal so bought whatever gave me the best bang for my buck.

All of my data is on the storage space that includes the drives that are reaching their EOL so I'm not able to play around with it. And I can imagine pulling files from that storage space will be terribly slow or not possible if read errors continue. I've ran CrystalDiskinfo which has told me there are bad sectors on two of the 2TB drives.

And I'm less concerned about performance of getting a parity storage space working as I am to just not losing data.
 
If you are concerned about losing data, you need to have that data backed up yesterday. Like you, I piecemeal-ed my storage setup using whatever drives were on sale, but I still have my irreplaceable pictures, music, documents, and video backed up to an external, even though it's only 1/5th of the total pool size.

Storage Space, if I recall correctly, performs poorly when safely removing a drive from the pool. This was noted in several articles from those who tested the system over a year ago when Win 8 Preview came out. It should recognize missing drives, but I'm not sure it keeps the data live or knocks the pool offline if you were to remove a drive physically. Your safest option is to make a separate pool with reliable drives and migrate data off the failing pool. I understand with the failing sectors this will be hard.

The idea of having 2 pools of varying redundancy (2-way + Parity) is sound, however, Storage Spaces is not recommenced for storing your data. It has many issues that can lead to loss of data; it doesn't handle differently sized drives as nicely as it's supposed to, it does a poor job of alerting you when a drive is failing, it stores data in a format that is only readable in Win 8/Server 2012 which makes it harder for data recovery, and the parity space has abysmal write speeds (like USB 2 slow). I recommend using anything else to store your data.

Search around here for more info on Storage Spaces or check out this article.

Now, for some help...

We already know your pool is 7TB total. How much of that is used? How 'active' is this data set? Are you updating a bunch of really small files everyday or is this just listen to a couple songs, make a couple docs, daily computing stuff? Do you even want to try using something other than Storage Spaces? How much are you willing to spend to replace these failing hard drives and properly protect your data?
 
Ya, my music is backed up to Google Play (which is awesome) as well as iTunes Match. My photos have been "backed up" to Picasa but to ensure I could fit them all I had to let Google resize them all. I'll be backing up the originals to a separate location shortly, same with my personal documents.

The remaining data is literally all downloaded TV shows and movies. Which, if lost, wouldn't be the end of the world, just more annoying than anything.

From my reading it is very easy to remove a drive, faulty or not, from a mirrored or parity Storage Space / Pool. Simply disconnect it and replace it with a new one. The cluster is rebuilt. After removing the drive but before adding a new one the cluster reports that is degraded because of the lost drive but all data is there. Apparently there is no simple way of "marking" a drive for removal and having the data shuffled off of it to preserve the cluster but this is essentially the same as just physically disconnecting the drive.

However, in a simple space like I have there is no way to remove a drive with data on it without taking the entire space offline. So, it looks like I'll be assembling a new pool and copying my data from the old one.

I convinced my wife that I can spend the money to buy three 4TB Seagate drives which I'll be creating a single pool with and at least two storage spaces on as I mentioned before.

I agree storage spaces isn't ideal because the data in a cluster can only be read by Windows 8 but I believe Storage Spaces handles differently sized drives very well and if the correct type of space is chosen should protect from data loss in the even of drive failure.

Honestly though, I chose Storage Spaces because it is simple and built in. I don't want to have to invest time into understanding how a different drive pooling system works.

Of the 7TB 4.78TB is used. The data is very unactive; a few files are read maybe a couple times a day and new files are added maybe a few times a week.
 
rygy said:
I'll be backing up the originals to a separate location shortly
Click to expand...

Seriously, do this ASAP. I have all my important stuff backed up using windows backup on a 1.5TB drive, and copy the files over to another 2TB drive. I am still not sure this is enough.

You will kick yourself if something happens!
 
Fair enough. I did research on Storage Spaces and decided (right now as-is) it wasn't for me, but if it performed as well as I wanted it to (even in the future) I would pick it up for sure. Your data seems simple; you may not mind the slowness of Parity Write if you don't write to the pool often, and your plan of 2-way + Parity is still sound.

You pretty much have this all squared away. 3x4TB is enough to create your pools and keep things redundant. Just back up your files, buy/install the drives, and get crackin'!
 
Open SS window, remove the failing drive and repair the array. Now copy data off.

Replace drive and rebuild. If you are keen, then experiment with different configurations.

Open PowerShell as ADMIN. Enter the following and do so for each array.

Code: 
Set-StoragePool -FriendlyName <Storage Pool Name> -IsPowerProtected $True

<Storage Pool Name> = the Pools exact name, remove the < >
 
when you have data error and want to save the data, the first thing you do is image the data. if you remove disks at different times, rebuilding arrays, etc, you're asking for trouble.

make a copy all at once. if you don't have the hardware to do this yet, turn the disks off and wait until you do have the replacement hardware.

also note that you've got two similar disks failing at the same time. that's a reminder: don't buy two of the same disk from the same store in the same shipping box and put them together in a mirror expecting they won't fail at the same time.
 
Imaging corrupted data is pointless and also stresses an array.

Remove failed drive, let SS sort itself out then replace drive NOW that data is intact.
 
Drives are not mirrored and I can't remove a drive without failing the entire array as there is no parity.

The failed array is offline until I can build a new one at which point I'll copy the data over as long as the drives are still functioning.
 
Lost-Benji said:
Imaging corrupted data is pointless and also stresses an array.

Remove failed drive, let SS sort itself out then replace drive NOW that data is intact.
Click to expand...

you should not post when you know so close to nothing


rygy said:
Drives are not mirrored and I can't remove a drive without failing the entire array as there is no parity.

The failed array is offline until I can build a new one at which point I'll copy the data over as long as the drives are still functioning.
Click to expand...

so the next step for you is finding a fault-tolerant imagine software that works with your system. you can't just right click and copy.

ddrescue is the best I know of, and may even work in windows with cygwin. I don't know what the fault-tolerant windows imager of choice for storage spaces is. there may not be one. the windows folks may just want you to destroy the broken array and restore from backup.
 
Facts:

1. He has 4 drives in a concatenated volume configuration
2. He has probably already lost some data, and there is no way to recover it.

Yes you have the right idea rygy, but you are vastly underestimating your drive needs. If you value your data and time, then you really need to read up on exactly what is happening behind the scenes on all these procedures.

You should really spend some time reading these pages until you can fully grasp everything on it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-RAID_drive_architectures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanned_volume
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels
 
I know there is one folder that causes hard-drive slow-down / freeze-up but I can't tell how much data has been affected other than that. From what CrystalDiskInfo says there aren't a lot of quarantined sectors but I know that more can pop up as I continue to stress the drive accessing multiple files for a long period of time while moving the data.

The PC has been powered down for a number of days since I realized I needed to build a new drive array. I just purchased four 3TB drives today and will be setting up a new storage pool this week on a separate machine.

I was just going to do the 'ol copy-paste in Windows but a fault-tolerant imager seems to be a much more logical choice rather than dealing with more and more slow downs / freeze-ups while moving the data off the old drives. Any data that I can't move to the new drives after trying a fault-tolerant file manager will be lost, nothing I can do about it now. As I said before, the only files that would cause me disappointment if they were lost are my photos but I'm certain they aren't affected and will be the first files I backup once I power the server back on. My music is backed up in the cloud (Google Play) and important personal files are on dropbox, skydrive and google docs which only leaves downloaded TV shows and movies which can just be downloaded again.
 
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